At what point can Protestants say the early/medieval church is not our church?

Brigid63 said:

Please note (and I'm sure you're aware of this) that for many centuries copies of the Bible were very few (as the printing press was yet to be invented) and that the common man was often illiterate.

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Please note also that a case can be made that a reason for the wide spread illiteracy was inflicted in the people by the church. You don't have to agree with me and there are other factors but reading is not a modern invention.

Did you know that one of the results of the reformation was the creation of an education system, especially in North America, to teach people how to read, especially to read the Bible? Did you know that many of the top universities in the USA were founded by protestant churches?

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

There are some strange consequences of what you're saying mind you. If the episcopalian nature of the church at such a period was a major mistake, in that sola scriptura effectively didn't exist, this would imply that the Church was immediately corrupted in the second century no? Would you agree with my earlier post about this where I suggested just that?

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A Biblical case could be made that error was introduced at a very early date. Paul in the book of Acts and many of his epistles address error. Revelation ch 2&3 gives specific examples of error. So that's 1st century error my friend.

Not to sound like a broken record but please allow me to repeat...
I'm answering this in response to and in the context of the OP question: At what point can Protestants say the early/medieval church is not our church?

thomas15 said:

Please note also that a case can be made that a reason for the wide spread illiteracy was inflicted in the people by the church. You don't have to agree with me and there are other factors but reading is not a modern invention.

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Prove it.

thomas15 said:

Did you know that one of the results of the reformation was the creation of an education system, especially in North America, to teach people how to read, especially to read the Bible? Did you know that many of the top universities in the USA were founded by protestant churches?

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Education didn't and never has belonged to the reformation alone. The reformers didn't advocate publicly funded schooling for everyone, though this isn't to suggest the reformation didn't have an impact on education of peoples generally. Particularly when it came with regards to study of Greek/Hebrew Bible no one would doubt Protestants had the virtual monopoly on those endeavors.

That being said there were plenty of Catholic educational apparatuses throughout Europe, especially when it came from the Catholic Reformation.

thomas15 said:

A Biblical case could be made that error was introduced at a very early date. Paul in the book of Acts and many of his epistles address error. Revelation ch 2&3 gives specific examples of error. So that's 1st century error my friend.

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What do you think God was doing between the time of the Apostles and the reformers letting his church fall from true Christianity? What did this accomplish?

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

Education didn't and never has belonged to the reformation alone. The reformers didn't advocate publicly funded schooling for everyone, though this isn't to suggest the reformation didn't have an impact on education of peoples generally. Particularly when it came with regards to study of Greek/Hebrew Bible no one would doubt Protestants had the virtual monopoly on those endeavors.

That being said there were plenty of Catholic educational apparatuses throughout Europe, especially when it came from the Catholic Reformation.

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I never said that education is the sole dominion of protestants. What I am saying is that for many centuries, when the church had a significant influence in society, education was not a priority. That changes dramatically after AD 1517.

I'm sorry that you don't see any agreement with anything I have to say but facts are facts. The church had literally centuries advance society as far as education is concerned and they punted. Sorry if that offends.

thomas15 said:

I never said that education is the sole dominion of protestants. What I am saying is that for many centuries, when the church had a significant influence in society, education was not a priority. That changes dramatically after AD 1517.

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thomas15 said:

I'm sorry that you don't see any agreement with anything I have to say but facts are facts. The church had literally centuries advance society as far as education is concerned and they punted. Sorry if that offends.

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I have to wonder what you know of medieval history in order to make this statement. You act as if they were all lazy and did nothing to further the model of education or society at large. We have to take into context the lack of education in Western Europe with the collapse of that portion of the Roman Empire and the dominance of Barbarians over Germany and France and Muslims over Spain. The Roman civilization dissapeared from the west when these tribes came in and survived only through educated priests and monks. If education was not a priority it was because there were more important matters of merely trying to survive and establish a new political order to counter the hostile forces surrounding them. To that extent when we see the establishment of France, the HRE, England and other major European powers we see an increased amount of learning, new books and monasteries being constructed. This would also include the first medieval universities.

Even in remote Ireland which wasn't unified there were extensive monasteries and efforts to preserve the ancient texts and learning. When England became too wealthy and prosperous they had to deal with the vikings for about 400 years, pillaging monasteries and people which set anglo-saxon civilization back. Need I mention the Carolingian renaissance and the development Carolingian minuscule to facilitate easier to read texts?

You want to blame everything on the medieval Church but that was not the only power of the day and nor can you accuse them, both east and west of disregarding education entirely. They didn't do any such thing and in fact were societies whose education was deeply informed by a faithful commitment to Christianity, much more so that our own decadent western civilization today.

The only thing that offends me is your ignorance.

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

The only thing that offends me is your ignorance.

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Sorry you feel that way my brother.

thomas15 said:

I think I have been quite clear on this matter. The Bible doesn't teach succession and those who went all in on it were at the heart of the period of time in history where the Scriptures were forbidden to the people.

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The two don't have much to do with each other, really.

I cannot say for sure what percentage of the succession was the cause of all that it could have been minor or it could have been a lot but for a 1000 or so years the average individual was forced to pay tithes and support but not allowed to read or own a Bible.

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Again, you're rolling all your complaints into Apostolic Succession, which doesn't make sense. Clergy who are NOT in Apostolic Succession would be as likely to do the same things--and actually they do.

Granted today there are many who are happy to get everything they know about the Scriptures from their Bishops.

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They do that in churches that have bishops who are not in Apostolic Succession and so do the churches that have powerful pastors, ministers, elders, evangelists, "apostles," or something similar but no bishops. I often hear the same complaint made about Baptist churches, for instance.

I would point out that illiteracy among the common folk of Western Protestant countries was high well into the 19th century. There are plenty of things the Catholic Church can be justly criticized for, but having a monopoly on illiteracy and ignorance isn't one of them.

Albion said:

Again, you're rolling all your complaints into Apostolic Succession, which doesn't make sense. Clergy who are NOT in Apostolic Succession would be as likely to do the same things--and actually they do.

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Actually, I have been very careful to do two things here. The first is to communicate that I'm not as you say rolling all of "my complaints" into succession and the second is to acknowledge that we are all entitled to our opinions due to individual soul liberty. You may also be secure in the knowledge that I have a full understanding of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession and the roles and authority of the various offices within the church.

I have also tried to maintain that the purpose of this thread, which I did not start, is to discuss this question: At what point can Protestants say the early/medieval church is not our church? One of my earliest responses was a question regarding the place of Biblical authority of the believer. I said "What is your standard for determining truth? And do you have a fairly complete understanding of the Scriptures?"

I was informed that this was not within the scope of this discussion. I disagree with that but we are all entitled to our opinions.

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

What do you think God was doing between the time of the Apostles and the reformers letting his church fall from true Christianity? What did this accomplish?

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Neither of us can really answer that question as we cannot know the hearts and minds of our fellow man. The best answer I have to that questions is to assume that like in the times of Elijah, where even a prophet of Jehovah couldn't see that there were any other believers, he was informed that there were 7000 men that had not bowed the knee to Baal as in 1 Kings 19:14-19. So we could apply that thinking to any time in history, not just the middle ages, but that God will always have his faithful in spite of all efforts to eliminate every single one of them.

Also I would contend, and this is thinking that is not always backed up by specific Scriptures but can be inferred by the Bible, is that the main thing to know is the basic simple gospel message. Beyond that, no one (or institution), me included, has perfect doctrine. So if we are trusting in Christ's shed blood on the cross we have salvation but that doesn't mean we have perfect doctrine.

James Murphy said:

I would point out that illiteracy among the common folk of Western Protestant countries was high well into the 19th century. There are plenty of things the Catholic Church can be justly criticized for, but having a monopoly on illiteracy and ignorance isn't one of them.

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I agree with you, please if you have the inclination, go back to what I actually wrote.

thomas15 said:

Actually, I have been very careful to do two things here. The first is to communicate that I'm not as you say rolling all of "my complaints" into succession

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I accept that you think this is the case, but in two explanations you consider to have been clear, there was just what I said--a morphing of one concept into some other complaint and that into another, etc.

Apostolic Succession, if it is to be addressed (and I regret that it was inserted into this particular thread) is either right or wrong, valid or invalid. It is a tricky subject, if truth be told, and most people do not understand it. But it needs to be addressed on its own without attempting to trace every Medieval error or alleged corruption back to Apostolic Succession in some vague way.

I have also tried to maintain that the purpose of this thread, which I did not start, is to discuss this question: At what point can Protestants say the early/medieval church is not our church?

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Yeh, these things do wander easily off-topic, I agree. Most threads manage to get off track within the first ten or so posts, it seems.

Albion said:

I accept that you think this is the case...

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Albion said:

Yeh, these things do wander easily off-topic, I agree.

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Apology accepted my dear brother have a great day!

I would ask why would anyone want to say that their church isn't from the early church? After all isn't the goal of conservative Christians to perform historic orthodoxy both in teaching and practice? I've been a part of evangelical churches and the early writings of Christians are generally looked down upon unless they can find some way to use them as proof, usually always Augustine. I use to believe that the church was terribly corrupted shortly after it's inception after the passing of the Apostles, but have more recently come around after I actually put some thought into it. The more I read early Christian writings the more red flags began to go off in my head about just how young some protestant practices are. Don't get me started on evangelical practice and doctrine .

It all depends on which denomination we are looking at, doesn't it? The proposition we were dealing with was a generalization that is really open to question.

Even if a denomination rejects certain things about the pre-Reformation church, it doesn't mean that the rejection applies to the whole history of the church up to ca. 1500.

And if we wanted to go into it further, there are Protestant churches which go to great lengths to try to prove that they are a continuation of the Apostolic church. That's the case with them, even as some other churches (not necessarily Protestant although usually thought of that way) specialize in disassociating themselves from the Church prior to the Reformation...and then reject the beliefs of the churches of the Reformation as well.

Albion said:

It all depends on which denomination we are looking at, doesn't it? The proposition we were dealing with was a generalization that is really open to question.

Even if a denomination rejects certain things about the pre-Reformation church, it doesn't mean that the rejection applies to the whole history of the church up to ca. 1500.

And if we wanted to go into it further, there are Protestant churches which go to great lengths to try to prove that they are a continuation of the Apostolic church. That's the case with them, even as some other churches (not necessarily Protestant although usually thought of that way) specialize in disassociating themselves from the Church prior to the Reformation...and then reject the beliefs of the churches of the Reformation as well.

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There's no such thing as "the Apostolic Church," in the sense of everyone during the generation after Jesus agreeing on doctrine. Paul and James had very different ideas, with Peter vacillating. The Synoptics have a very different vision of Jesus from John or Paul.

Modern churches have similar variation.

The idea of a monolithic Apostolic theology is an ideological construct, attempting to validate whatever view the particular person holds.

There are obviously things that the parts of the Apostolic church we know about agreed upon. Most modern churches accept those things. But the variation is pretty significant.

hedrick said:

There's no such thing as "the Apostolic Church,..."

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All right then, we'll say "the first century church" instead. That is the meaning.

Albion said:

All right then, we'll say "the first century church" instead. That is the meaning.

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But this has the same issue I just described. Even the books in the NT have a sufficient range of theology that a proper exposition of Synoptic Christology wouldn't be acceptable in CF, even in Controversial Christian Theology

hedrick said:

There's no such thing as "the Apostolic Church," in the sense of everyone during the generation after Jesus agreeing on doctrine. Paul and James had very different ideas, with Peter vacillating. The Synoptics have a very different vision of Jesus from John or Paul.

Modern churches have similar variation.

The idea of a monolithic Apostolic theology is an ideological construct, attempting to validate whatever view the particular person holds.

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This statement has me confused. Wouldn't you say that any religion is an ideological construct? The question is not if but how and by whom. For the Apostolic churches, the how is by thinking about and sometimes even having further revelations from God of what Jesus taught. There are several examples in Acts of God continuing to reveal Himself to the Apostles after the Ascension. The "by whom" is obviously by the Apostles. You are right, this isn't a prebaked, monolithic belief system post-Ascension. It required thought and prayer and answers from God. These men were human and still needed God's guidance; but to the Apostolic churches, they were the most able to seek and find the truth.